Country Inn Hotels and Resorts parent to add new hotels

Espire Group, which owns and operates luxury resort Six Senses Fort Barwara in Rajasthan’s Ranthambore, is planning to invest approximately ₹50 crore over the next two years to expand Country Inn Hotels & Resorts, its mid-market brand.

The company will use the money to acquire resorts on lease, hire talent, renovate and modernize all existing owned resorts, launch a new five-star luxury boutique brand, and for marketing.

The expansion will be funded through internal accruals, the company’s chief operating officer Akhil Arora said. “We’ve decided to revamp all our existing hotels as well as expand the brand which earlier was predominantly restricted to the Uttarakhand region. We will take the brand to more parts of India where the leisure markets are very strong,” Arora said in an interview.

The company is studying various models for growth, ranging from acquiring hotels to buying them where feasible. It will also look at taking hotel properties on lease and operating them. Also, it plans to go asset-light while expanding via hotel management contracts.

In 2022, the company plans to expand into 12 locations including Goa, Dehradun, Mussoorie, Varanasi and Vrindavan. Eight of its upcoming 12 hotels are expected to open by August this year. Country Inn currently has four properties—Jim Corbett, Bhimtal, Haridwar and Kosi (on the Agra highway)—all in Uttarakhand.

Arora said the ₹50 crore will be deployed as and when the company takes over new hotel properties with an average of ₹3 crore to ₹4 crore expenditure on each property to renovate or build further. It plans to have a total of 20 hotels in the portfolio by the end of FY23. The most recent addition to its portfolio has been one hotel in Jim Corbett, its second resort in the location. Espire is owned by Amit Rai, who also runs Espire Infrastructure and the Radcliffe school chain. The resort brand Country Inn was started in the early 1990s.

According to Gurugram-based hospitality firm Hotelivate’s 2021 report on Indian hospitality, India has about 144,000 branded hotel rooms and has a proposed inventory supply of 60,273 rooms.